Environment Agency officers, gave my local river Cut a clean bill of health this week, delivering another 1,500 juvenile coarse fish from their Calverton Fish Farm, to the small Thames tributary, that was badly hit by a severe fish kill in early 2017. Since then the river has benefitted from bank works to improve the flow and also an injection of over 3,000 fish.

A bright December morning was ideal to transfer the fish, 500 each of chub, roach and dace, from the fish transporter on the bank, to the clear shallow stream.

Some good sized roach were introduced.

The chub above are already worth catching.

Head Park Warden and secretary of the controlling Braybrooke Community Nature and Fishing Club, Danny Williams, helped with the introduction of the 500 dace.

Having fished the Cut last week, I can confirm that the fish introduced last year have already grown to a good size. Previously there were no dace in these upper reaches and yet they are now a hard to hook, fast biting species occupying the shallow gravel runs.

The dace above was the best of a dozen dace taken on stick float and bread punch, along with small chub and roach, during a short two hour visit.

With more bank work to improve the flow promised by the EA in the coming months, club members can hopefully look forward to a return to catches of a few years ago.